


Dappled Sunlight

by nesneros



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), F/F, No Time Bubble, Or maybe a tiniest bit of angst but mostly fluff, Patch 5.2: Echoes of a Fallen Star Spoilers, Post-Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Very soff, YEARS HAVE PASSED, all fluff no angst, all the happiness, gratuitous descriptions of nice days, shameless fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2021-02-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23911891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesneros/pseuds/nesneros
Summary: She’s in her comfiest clothes, a green sleeveless top and paired loose-fitting pants. Even with her gun at her side, she is ready for a morning of relaxation rather than running. Her shoes are off, feet bare to the wet still-clinging-to-the-dew grass as she wanders toward a flower bed far from the noise she is used to. She lays in dappled sunshine under a tree likely older than her great-great-great-great Grandparents, Titania’s castle just visible in the distance, and sighs.A day of relaxation for Emery brings her to an inevitable confession.
Relationships: Alisaie Leveilleur/Warrior of Light
Comments: 8
Kudos: 53





	1. Chapter 1

She loves mornings the best, but especially  _ this _ morning... 

On this morning, she escaped everyone’s eyes and teleported herself to Dohn Mheg. She was left alone by most of the pixies in Feo Ul’s domain, as King Titania themself ordered that when their ‘sapling arrives on her own during the dewy hours of morn she is to be left  _ alone _ .’

Now, she’s in her comfiest clothes, a green sleeveless top and paired loose-fitting pants. Even with her gun at her side, she is ready for a morning of relaxation rather than running. Her shoes are off, feet bare to the wet still-clinging-to-the-dew grass as she wanders toward a flower bed far from the noise she is used to. She lays in dappled sunshine under a tree likely older than her great-great-great-great Grandparents, Titania’s castle just visible in the distance, and sighs. 

She’ll have to pay a visit to her beautiful branch before she leaves, but the time she gets here is more than worth the gossip she exchanges with them. It’s why she comes  _ here _ . As Feo Ul’s sapling, the pixie always seems to know when she needs time away from  _ everything _ and has always made sure that she got the time she needs to just take a break. This is her time for  _ herself; _ she knows Feo Ul will also ensure the few monsters in the area will leave her alone.

The smell of grass with the sweet fragrance of the flowers is as much a lullaby as tweeting birds in the trees. She lets herself drift into a half-sleep, soaking in the sun's warmth on her skin, digging her fingers into the grass on either side of her, and relishing the feel of dirt under her fingertips.

She’s been laying against the earth for what feels like mere minutes (but is more likely hours) when she feels light stepped shoes approaching. Not particularly attempting to hide their approach means it’s not Thancred.

Y’shtola would already be berating her for skipping out on some meeting or another, so it’s also not the Miqo’te. Urianger respects her needs for quiet and space, which means its Alphinaud or Alisaie. Alphinaud’s steps are still far too clunky. Her oldest friend lacks nearly any attempt at subtlety, leaving only Alisaie.

It doesn’t surprise her that Alisaie’s the one that tracks her down. The Scion’s respectful of her free time but is ever-worried when their hero turns up missing. 

Her fingers don’t so much as twitch near the gun on the ground nearby, though it is never quite out of reach. While Feo Ul makes her position on bothering the Warrior while she is here very clear, pixies and monsters are capricious at best and the temptation of a sleeping Warrior of Darkness is mighty.

“Hullo, Ali,” she says instead, not even bothering to open her eyes. If it was an emergency Ali would already have been shouting at her to get up. Since she’s meandering, it means she can get more sleep in.

The elezen doesn’t seem entirely unsurprised about having been heard, and she can hear the smile in her voice when she replies, “Found you.”

“Is something on fire?” the Warrior asks, disinclined towards getting up. It’s the  _ perfect _ day in Il Mheg, just shy of being  _ too _ hot with a warm and gentle breeze drifting through the trees. The leaves even whisper to her occasionally.

“Not in the slightest,” she replies, and the sound of what can only be a rapier being tossed to the ground precedes the elezen laying down and using Emery’s stomach as a pillow.

It’s not the first time they’ve lain in such a position, and she’s unsurprised when she squints her eyes open to see Alisaie briefly sitting up to undo her braid, long locks covering the Warrior and ground next to them. It’s a silent request and the Warrior is inclined to grant it, slowly carding her fingers through the softness of the threads. Their silvery sheen glows in the early afternoon sunshine as she absent-mindedly scratches near the roots and soothes away any snags.

She’s going to owe Feo Ul even more gossip for slipping Alisaie through the pixies’ grasp, though perhaps without Alphinaud at her side the temptation isn’t as great for the fae entirely in love with the pair.

It’s been what feels like an age since they’ve had the time to sit like this, not since their time in the Steppes. Then, Lyse had been right beside them, the three girls enjoying a momentary lapse in jumping from one thing straight to another, all piled half on each other, occasionally speaking but mostly just enjoying the peace that their group so rarely found.

Inevitably Lyse would get antsy and bored, ever the most active of the three, and would wander off to find something nearby to fight, leaving the other two to their relative solitude. Lyse’s patrol around them meant the Warrior would be able to all but fall asleep, content knowing that the monk would allow nothing to bother them.

Emery is not one for people. For all her infamy as the Warrior of Light and Darkness, she is quiet because she doesn’t know how to not say the wrong thing. Her bluntness has scared off more than one potential friend. Her friendship with Alphinaud is more from the luck of circumstance rather than any initial bond between them, their long time in Ishgard forging their friendship just as much as Alphinaud’s willingness to talk so Emery doesn’t have to.

The same isn’t true of the fairer twin. Alisaie is as skittish around people as she is, ever desiring to just cut to the point of things. Politics are for people who have more time on their hands. She has the same need as the Warrior for stretches of being alone and away from the crowds, and during their time in Doma, the two of them found that their desire to be alone seemed to make an exception for the other. Neither of them felt the need to fill a comfortable silence with words, and as contradictory as it sounds, the Warrior cherishes the times when she can find solitude alone with Alisaie.

From Alisaie’s contented sigh, she’s been needing this time as much as Emery has, and she feels immediately guilty for not having thought of her before now. As much as it feels like it has been ages for herself, for Alisaie it has been nearly two years since those unforgotten days.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, knowing that the elezen will know what she’s apologizing for. It’s one of her favorite parts of their friendship, that Alisaie has ever seen through the words she says to the root of what she actually means.

“Think nothing of it,” Alisaie replies, and the unaccusative tone of her voice and the way she turns her face toward the hand in her hair says she means it.

It is not long before she is asleep.

Emery blinks back the light bursting against her eyes to glance down at the red mage. It’s rare, she supposes, for some to see the girl she’s with so relaxed. The same might apply to herself, she muses, carefully brushing back the bangs that have drifted toward Alisaie’s closed eyes. Both of them are so often more willing to throw themselves into the next fight rather than wait around -- all waiting does for them both is incite anxiety.

She wonders when exactly it was that she fell in love with Alisaie. Oh, she loves all of her friends, carries them close to her heart, but how long ago did that love change to being  _ in love _ with her fiery spitball of a friend? When the snark had slipped from being amusing to endearing; when she had gone from being the person she liked to have around to the only one she wanted at her side.

Sometime during when the Scions had disappeared, surely. She remembers how her heart had nearly broken when they’d gotten Alphinaud back only to have him already fallen... It had been painful enough to have lost one of her closest friends to whatever had befallen the Scions, but to watch Alisaie lose her brother had smashed her to pieces.

That is until Alisaie’s promise to her, to not part, had been broken.

Alisaie had been gone and Zenos had been coming for her remaining friends and she’d nearly died, half-blind to the world around her. Each of the Scions held an important piece of her heart, but Alisaie even then held the biggest piece of it.

When Alisaie had first seen the scar from Zenos’ attack, the fury and self-blame and despair that had run through her eyes--

“It’s not your fault,” Emery had immediately said, desperate to stop the hurt radiating through her friend.

“I made you a promise, and that right there,” Alisaie said, pointing at the long scar running down her chest, “proves how incapable I was at keeping it. How disastrously I failed you.”

“You had no control over that. I  _ know _ you’d never have left if you’d ever had the choice. Heck, I haven’t really gotten rid of you since we met, have I?” she replied, voice intentionally light and teasing, thrilled when it seemed to work and Alisaie looked to her eyes again instead of the damned scar.

“Pah. As if you could. Sorry Emery, we Leveilleurs are like barnacles, once we find someone we care about, you’re stuck with us.”

“That certainly explains all that time I spent with Alphinaud in Ishgard then…”

“Yes, exactly.”

“And you’re here now,” Emery had said, gesturing to the surrounding room. “Without you to cut straight to the point of Urianger’s favors I’d surely still be waiting on the back of Bismarck.”

“You bet I am. No more adventures for you without me back on the Souce, you clearly need my expertise in battle.”

She barely hid the wince that came from not yet telling Alisaie about Ruby Weapon. That conversation can wait longer… like maybe forever if she pulls the right strings, pays in the right favors… surely Gaius owes her at least one or a hundred.

Looking away to pull a shirt on and avoid looking at Alisaie for a moment, she had teased, “You mean in case I need you to use the Limit Break  _ we’ve all earned at the first opportunity availed _ ?”

“I wouldn’t need to if the rest of you would bother to use it!”

“Alisaie, you use it  _ immediately, _ and as the other fighter in the group it’d be just as logical if not  _ moderately less blinding to everyone _ if I used it instead.”

“You’ll just have to get speedier on the trigger then, now won’t you?” she replied, smiling that devilish grin that always left Emery weak in the knees.

Blinking back to the present, she realizes her feelings had  _ definitely _ solidified before their arrival on the First. She’s thinking back absent-mindedly as a single blue eye blinks open to peer at her.

“Emery, have you just been  _ staring _ at me while I sleep?” Alisaie’s voice is still muffled, half-buried in Emery’s stomach and edged with the raspiness she only gets from having been asleep. All Emery wants to do is hear it for the rest of her life. 

Still, one does not admit weakness to Alisaie, so she replies, “Not the whole time, no. Sometimes I was also petting you. Occasionally I even breathed.”

“How dare you. You're supposed to be my loyal pillow, your only task to be my comfort!” Alisaie mock-gasps, sitting up but staying curled into her side.

It’s suddenly overwhelming, the depths of love she has for Alisaie. She’ll tell her, finally, just how she feels, that having her at her side makes the seemingly impossible feats she’s expected to take on one after another feel possible, that without her unwavering loyalty that surely she’d have fallen apart before now, that-

_ “Iloveyou.” _

It comes out of her in one breathless mumble, far from a romantic declaration and far more like she’s sneezed and just formed somewhat intelligible words. Still, they seem to leave Alisaie frozen, eyes wide and unblinking before they crinkle upward in happiness… with a bit of the typical snark even as her smile becomes breathtaking.

“You do, do you?” she replies, leaning over so one arm is on the Warrior’s far side, pinning her down as if she was about to sprint off.

...She hadn’t thought of doing so before this moment but it was sounding like an excellent idea.

“....Yeeessss?” she says hesitantly, her eyes looking everywhere but at Alisaie.

“You’ll face down Zenos, Primals, and Ascians, but you can’t look me in the eye after mumbling out  _ something _ that sounds like you telling me you love me when everyone already knows exactly how I feel about you?” Alisaie keeps her tone light and teasing, but Emery’s not foolish enough to believe that she’s not nervous herself.

“You’re right,” she says and turns her gaze straight to Alisaie’s.

“I love you Ali, I have for--” she begins to say before the pretty words she’s mentally sprinted to form are cut off by a kiss.

Alisaie kisses like she does everything else - at full force, no hesitation. She rushes in and backs out like she’s still dancing around an enemy with a rapier, and with as much as the Warrior’s thoughts have fled her, she has to pause to confirm that it even happened.

“I love you too, but you ruined my nap earlier with your staring and I’m going back to sleep. Remind me when I wake up that I owe Thancred 10 gil for you admitting to it first,” she says before laying back down, this time half on top of Emery and half on the ground.

There’s nothing intimate about the position, but it’s everything she could have ever hoped for. The perfect day, the Warrior thought, made more perfect by the elezen tucked under her chin and wrapped in her arms.


	2. Shovel Talk

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just some fluffy fluff humor to lighten up your day!

“Emery,” Alphinaud begins, wearing the expression she has seen on him only when he’s finely manipulating the strings of entire nations, “I want you to know that if you hurt Alisaie in any way, I know someone who has defeated _primals_.”

Emery starts clutching her stomach in laughter. “Alphinaud, are you--”

From the look on his face, he doesn’t appreciate that she’s beginning to snort from laughing so hard. “Are you trying to give me the shovel talk? And did you just threaten me with  _ me? _ ”

The elezen takes on a deep flush and shakes his head. “My apologies. I have  _ several _ versions of the speech prepared for all manners of people, but did not update one for the improbability that  _ you _ were the one courting my sister. Ahem. Let me try that again--”

She’s gasping through cackles when she asks, “You prepared this?”

He ignores her question, waiting for her laughter to settle down before he begins again.

“Emery, I want you to know that if you hurt my sister, I know someone who has wielded the eyes of Nidhogg and come out stronger for it.”

“Now you’re trying Estinien?” she asks, trying to keep her face straight. She gives up; the smile tugging at her mouth refuses to be hidden. “You know I also defeated him too ri--”

“Emery! Please. I am trying to do my job as her brother here, and it’s very difficult trying to warn off the strongest person on multiple shards.”

“You could threaten to take away my tea and that would be all the warning I’d ever need.”

Alphinaud has been her singular source of tea on the First. Interminable days together in the bitter cold of Ishgard means he knows she prefers strong, fruity teas which she will promptly over-steep and add far too much sugar and cream to. She  _ likes _ trying teas though, and she’s always been rotten at trying to figure out what new blends to try.

Her friend doesn’t seem amused when he says, “You are possibly the worst person I have ever met.”

“Noooo, you love me Alphy!” she replies, reaching over the cafe table they’d settled at to have the ‘talk’ Alphinaud had requested. Patting him on the hand, she smiles her best ‘I am the Warrior of Light and everything is alright’ smile, before it becomes much more devious.

There was no way that Alisaie knew Alphinaud was trying to give her the shovel talk. If she knew her girlfriend well, and she definitely did after all these years, she was sure Ali would tell Alphinaud she could take care of herself, thank you very much.

“You know I would never do anything to hurt Ali. She is enough of a threat herself, anyway. You know what Ali is like when she’s mad. Just asking for a friend, does  _ she _ know that you’re having this talk with me?”

He begins frantically looking around the cafe as if his sister will spring up. “No, and I intend to keep it that way.”

Voice lilting with humor, she teases back, “She will ask what we did this afternoon, you know that.”

“Please don’t tell her,” he begs her, visibly gulping.

Emery lets out a full cackle at his request, a tear falling from her eyes. “You--you’re so bad at this, how are you so bad at this?” 

“I’ll have you know that I have scared off plenty of her suitors before.”

“Did you also threaten them with me?”

He’s turning a shade of red she hasn’t quite seen on an elezen before as he replies, “I-- possibly.”

“How is it possible that you can maneuver the policies of  _ several _ nations, but at this you completely fail?”

“It’s not like I ever expected to need to give  _ you _ this speech!”

“Alphinaud,” Emery begins, attempting to gulp down a breath of air despite her still-escaping fits of giggles, “everyone has known that I’ve been in love with Alisaie for years. Thancred was running a betting pool on which of us would admit it first.  _ Literally everyone _ has known forever. Lyse teased me about the ‘ _ sappy doting eyes’ _ we were apparently sending each other while we were in the Steppes. She also owes  _ me _ 20gil about that as it is; she bet that after you two near- _ giants _ stopped going through your growth spurt, Ali would be taller than me and I’d have to pull her down to kiss her for the first time.”

“You  _ are _ shorter than Alisaie now though?” Alphinaud asks in a mix of confusion and ‘this is already more information than I wanted to know’.

“Ahh, but I kissed her for the first time while we were sitting down, and thus equal in height,” she replies, gesturing between the two of them. While it was true that  _ standing _ Alphinaud and Alisaie both had nearly a foot on her now, the twins were all  _ gangly legs _ and while sitting were mostly equal in height.

The thought stirs up hilarious images of both the twins attempting to walk and falling flat on their faces more than once while adjusting to their sudden growth spurts. It seemed their bodies on the Source had finally reached ‘adulthood’, with or without their souls. The trait had somehow trickled to their spirits on the First, and Emery has spent many a day alternating between handing Alisaie ice packs for her splintered shins and filling tubs with boiling water for her to soak in.

“I still can’t believe she’s taller than me,” Alphinaud pouts. It’s mostly indiscernible to the casual eye, but to Alisaie’s unending delight, she does in fact measure out to being an ilm taller than her brother.

It’s that very height that casts a shadow over them as she arrives from behind Emery, a rapier clattering onto the table announcing her presence.

“What’s that  _ little _ brother? I couldn’t hear you from down there?”

“Why you-- you know very well that I am the  _ older _ brother.”

“Yes, you’re still the smaller one though, aren’t you?”

Emery laughs at the two of them bickering back and forth.

“Just what are you all doing here, anyway?” Alisaie asks after the two of them (briefly, likely) settle down.

“Oh, Alphinaud was just telling me--”

“About the progress we’ve made since she was last here, Emery was just filling me in about her latest excursion with Gaius Baelsar.”

“With  _ whom?”  _

She can see Alisaie spinning to watch her from the side of the table, but she’s too busy glaring at Alphinaud to meet her love’s eyes. That little… she’d been planning to cover for him, and he’d thrown her to the wolves instead.

“Gaius. He informed Rauhbahn who then asked for my help. After we defeated the giant abomination akin to Ultima weapon, Gaius discovered that the weapon had been piloted by one of the orphans he had raised in Garlemald. There are implications that more will be arriving.”

Alisaie takes a deep breath, eyes clearly tracking over Emery as if she hadn’t already seen her the moment she’d returned from the Source yesterday afternoon before she calmly asks, “Were you harmed?”

“No. Everything went smoothly. I worked with my adventuring guild, and you know how my healer friend scarcely lets me get so much as a scratch without fixing it.”

“All right then,” she says before turning to whack her brother upside the head.

“Owww, what was that for!” he asks, rubbing the side of his head and looking at his sister in betrayal.

“That’s for trying to get Emery in trouble. Now Emery, just what was really happening?”

Panic rising in Alphinaud’s voice, he asks, “What do you mean what was happening? I just told you what we’d been discussing!”

“Alphinaud, I have known you every moment of my life, and nobody knows better than I do that when you’re trying to get out of trouble you’ll throw attention onto someone else instead.”

Emery snickers, before replying, “he was just telling me about how he’d bet that we’d both be too chicken to ever confess.”

“Alphinauuuuuuuud,” Alisaie begins, while Alphinaud shoots her a betrayed look. It’s the  _ least  _ he deserves; Thancred had told her about the little traitor’s bet, so it was the truth. Sort’ve. Worst semi-brother figure ever. 

Emery leans back in her chair and takes a sip of tea as she watches Alphinaud flee from his sister, who at this point has unsheathed her weapon and is chasing him around with the scabbard. 

An excellent way to spend an afternoon, and now she has the perfect blackmail to hold over Alphinaud’s head the next time she needs information on where to take Alisaie on a date.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My thanks to my beta and my friend who assisted when I was like HELP I'M STUCK!


	3. You've got this

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Just a little fluff for the holiday. 5.4 spoilers.

“You’re going to do it,” she says, leaning against Alisaie as they wait for G’raha Tia to find _hopefully_ something help Alisaie on her quest to bring a cure to tempering to the people of the Source.

“You don’t know that,” Alisaie says back.

“I do,” she replies confidently. She pulls back a little to look Alisaie in those eyes of hers that are always so filled with fire and determination.

“I know it the same way I knew that you never would’ve left for the First if you’d had a choice about it. The same way I know that the first thing you probably did was demand to be sent back,” she says, laughing as the expression crossing Alisaie’s face says how correct she is as she continues, “the way I know that you’ll never, ever let me feel alone in a crowded room of people and that as much as you love to pester him, you’d do absolutely anything for your brother-”

“I would not! I would absolutely let that pest drown.”

“You unquestionably would go in after him eventually,” she chuckles, “even if you let him get a little waterlogged first. But my point, my gremlin, is that once you set your mind to something or some _one_ ,” she says while wiggling her eyebrows suggestively, “is that you do it. There was never a chance that you wouldn’t take everything you learned on the First and use every bit you could to try and save Ga Bu. You’ll do it.”

“Well, how can I not, now,” Alisaie replies with a fond shake of her head. “The Warrior of Light _and_ Darkness has said I’ll do it.”

“Pah!” Emery replies, scrunching her nose, “forget her, _I’ve_ said you’ll do it.”

“I stand corrected. Emery, my totally normal and non-savior of multiple worlds girlfriend has said I’ll do it and so I shall.”

“That’s right,” she replies, dropping a kiss on Alisaie’s cheek. 

“You know, this would’ve been a really nice date for the two of us if you hadn’t given in and let G’raha come with us,” Alisaie replies.

“Excuse me, if I hadn’t let G’raha come along, we couldn’t have gotten to see:” Emery begins, ticking the moments off on her fingers, “How terrible G’raha is at lying, how jealous you get when he shows off in front of me - OOF - Alisaie, your elbows really are the pointiest around,” she says, cackling even as she rubs the place on her stomach that had just found itself in the vicinity of her girlfriend’s elbow. Unfortunate, that. “And how be it bats or lighting crystals, I clearly have the better luck.”

“You’re the worst, and I require a new girlfriend. Hydaelyn! _Hydaelyn_ , this Warrior of Light is broken, I require a new Warrior!”

“Wow. I’m so easily replaced. I have one thing a new Warrior of Light would not, however,” she says, grinning broadly at Alisaie.

“And what’s that?” Alisaie says, squinting at her suspiciously.

“The love of the most wonderful girl around.”

Alisaie huffs a laughing sigh as she smiles back, “well then, I suppose I shall keep this one. While is fortunate, really, as this one already has my whole heart.”

**Author's Note:**

> Many many thanks to my lovely Beta who is always there to read things when I throw them at her, and to also talk me off the ledge about if I should post something or not.


End file.
